Tuesday, August 17, 2010

the way august is...

This is such a dragging-your-feet month...It is the end of summer. School is about to start. The garden is on the wane and, believe it or not, many of us are already stressing about holiday travel plans and such seemingly far-in-the-future questions as how we're going to make it through the financial and emotional crush of another long winter.

I love August. I love the fat, hot August moon. I love the slow evenings in the backyard with bonfires and conversation, snacking on green beans we just pulled from the vines. But it always feels like the end of a lovely thing.

Of course, part of this is a seasonal thing, but it is also, sadly, imposed by the school schedule. This annoys me no end. When Birch was very small, I always saw us as homeschoolers. I wanted our learning to ebb and flow with our energy and the seasons and the demands of our lives. But things turned out differently for myriad reasons and here we are kowtowing to the aggravating and unforgiving demands of "tardy policies," "vacations" and "attendance policies" that are set by people in suits that are far and away from the rhythms of our lives here in our little urban farmstead paradise.

Now, I hesitate to complain, mind you. Really, we are incredibly fortunate because my son is able to attend an absolutely amazing environmental charter school with a curriculum that comes straight out of my most Earth-conscious, peace-mongering, community-loving hippie dream. His teachers are phenomenal, dynamic people that constantly challenge the students to question what they are taught and search for their own answers. Every week, they go on amazing field trips to hike in forests, camp out, raft rivers, investigate natural areas and artistic communities, etc. But still...

Part of me wishes that we could homeschool...that we could create our own learning system. School has been such an enormous benefit to my son, that it would take a huge leap for me to pull him out of that wonderful learning community. I have a lot of soul searching to do as Veda approaches school-age...